Guiding catheters are instruments that allow a physician to locate and cannulate vessels in a patient's anatomy for performing various medical procedures, including mapping heart vessels (venography) and implanting of cardiac pacing devices. Cannulating heart vessels may require navigating a small diameter, flexible guide through convoluted vasculature into a heart chamber, and then into a destination heart vessel. Once the destination heart vessel is reached, the catheter acts as a conduit for insertion of payloads into the vessel.
Because the guiding catheter must traverse a convoluted path, it can often be difficult to maneuver the catheter to particular vessels. For example, a common target of pacing lead implantation procedures is the coronary sinus accessed from the right atrium of the heart. Maneuvering the guiding catheter into the opening (ostium) of the coronary sinus involves locating a relatively small vessel located at a wall of a larger heart chamber.
Some methods such as fluoroscopy are used to assist in guiding a device into vessels, such as the coronary sinus. Fluoroscopy involves injecting a radiopaque dye into the heart chamber then viewing the heart using radiographic (e.g., X-ray) imaging equipment. However, it is preferable to minimize the patient's exposure to X-rays. Additionally, an imaging technique such as fluoroscopy only provides a two-dimensional view of the target area. The anatomical structures require maneuvering in three dimensional space. This is especially true in relatively large cavities such as heart chambers. Therefore, a system that assists in placing a guiding catheter in a destination vessel with or without the use of fluoroscopy is desirable.